East African trade bloc expands

Somalia has officially become the eighth member of the East African Community (EAC) after more than a decade of lobbying to be admitted into the regional trade bloc that operates a single market and allows free movement of goods and people among member states.

The country’s leader, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, signed the Treaty of Accession with South Sudan President Salva Kiir, who is the current chair of the EAC, in the Ugandan city of Entebbe on Friday, three weeks after Somalia’s membership was accepted. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the bloc said in a statement.

Somalia has been crippled by conflict since 1991, when its government collapsed following the rise of the jihadist group al-Shabab.

The Horn of Africa country’s economy, which is heavily reliant on livestock and agriculture, has been exacerbated by prolonged droughts and recent heavy floods, dragging it into a hunger crisis. Russia recently shipped 25,000 tons of humanitarian wheat to the food-insecure country, while the UN food program estimates that 4.1 million of its citizens will face acute hunger by the end of the year.

President Mohamud has hailed Somalia’s accession to the regional trade bloc as a chance to achieve “prosperity.”

The EAC was created in 2000, with one of its primary goals being to facilitate cross-border trade by eliminating customs duties between its member countries. It established a common market in 2010.

Somalia has been pushing to join the group since 2011, when former president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed initiated an application process, but some member states have been reported to be hesitant about allowing it.

As part of the criteria for admission to the EAC, new countries must demonstrate principles of good governance, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and social justice.

However, Somalia was named the world’s most corrupt country in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published earlier this year by Transparency International. With three decades of violence and political instability, the African country has consistently ranked as one of the least peaceful in the world, leaving many Somalis in dire humanitarian conditions, according to the organization.

President Mohamud, who took office in May of last year and dissolved two anti-corruption bodies, has been accused of ignoring concerns about the country’s “rampant” corruption.

Critics have claimed that Somalia was not prepared to join the EAC, initially made up of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which joined in 2022.

Somalia began negotiations with the EAC in August, with President Mohamud assuring the bloc that his country was working relentlessly to address concerns with the support of member states.

On Friday, the Somali leader welcomed his country’s membership in the trade bloc as a “moment of immense pride.”

“We are united in our pursuit of shared objectives and committed to strengthening economic, social and political ties for the accelerated development of our region,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).